


Lacerations About the Forearm

by HollowPhoenix



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Caretaking, Childhood Memories, Domestic, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, LITERALLY, i hate tagging things, ruvik is a big ol dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 07:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11664003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowPhoenix/pseuds/HollowPhoenix
Summary: They'd known each other since they were boys, though Ruben always seemed to receive him as a pest. But in these trying hours of an invention gone wrong, it's up to the pest to put him back together.





	Lacerations About the Forearm

**Author's Note:**

> Shitty title.  
> A quick thing I wrote because I refuse to believe that Ruvik took care of his own damn self, considering how he viewed his body. Made some slight adjustments to canon to fit my boy in there but it's so minor that it shouldn't matter too much.  
> Most of this was written at 3AM so pardon any mistakes.
> 
> It's not that kind of OC fanfic. I promise.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg

He dabbed a cotton ball over Ruben's calloused flesh, seeing strands of it untangle and stick into his scars. He picked them out gently and interchanged cotton for cloth, spilling more alcohol onto the fabric. He looked into jaundiced eyes, dull and miffed. He spoke quietly, gently stippling his skin with the rag. "I told you voice activation was a bad idea, Ruby."

Ruben was quicker to speak up than he had anticipated. After unfortunate events, he became stoic, fixed on mending the issue and acting as if it had never happened. As if it had been a delusion. "Something could have easily slipped out of place in the sensors, causing vocal distortion and in turn making me unrecognizable. It _will_ be fixed. I won't allow a reoccurrence."

He was speaking, of course, about his safe trap. He'd made blueprints directly following Jimenez's "favors" to him. It was a vocal identification based safe, complete with spring-loaded barbed wire encased inside. It was intended to bind about the face and incapacitate. He'd been warned that vocal activation was bound to go wrong, since Ruben knew near to nothing about it, but he was classically stubborn. It was impressive when it worked, but it had lost its luster when it had tangled into Ruben's arm and clawed  his face.

The two sat in the space adjacent to the music room, Ruben sitting on the loveseat and his caretaker sitting cross-legged on the ottoman. Supplies were scattered around him on the floor and on the couch. Cleansers, ointment, and bandages. _Medical_ bandages; wrappings. The only kind Ruben could wear. The radio in the next room was obnoxiously loud for his standards, even though that meant it was adjusted to be one tier louder than he preferred it.

He flinched suddenly, feeling an uncomfortable pressure against his skin. He assumed it was pain, but he would have had a better hypothesis if his nerve endings were where they should be. His head craned down towards the sensation to find the other man pulling a barb from underneath his skin. His jaw clenched and unclenched repeatedly as he loathed the numbness and the pressure of something that was very much _there,_ but refused to punish him as it should.

"It's okay," The other whispered, blood on his hands and his eyes full-focus, never leaving Ruben's arm. "I've always fixed you up."

The barb released itself from the under layer of Ruben's skin after a hefty battle. He bled profusely from the wound until it was cleaned, bubbling at the contact with alcohol and simmering back down after a few careful douses with the liquid. It burned past his insensate epidermis and into deeper regions, nearly granting him a gentle prick of pain at the innermost layer of his skin. Ruben stared into the other man's face with analytic volition. He reminisced back to their younger years, when he had been untainted, unspoiled, and had still retained a trace of innocence. Back when this man had just been dubbed "the neighbor boy" by his sister. Back when Ruben had felt invincible, and his boosted ego was thanks to the same man that sat across from him now. Back when he was a boy that idolized Ruben for no reason apparent to him.

He'd cry for Laura when he scraped his knees in the barn and would be met instead with a sloppily-dressed, less-than-impressive boy in tattered jeans and a faded shirt, who wanted nothing more in the world than to help. He thought it pitiable, and soon he found the boy to be malleable and compliant. A vessel to reveal his dark secrets to. Because he hadn't cared if the tiny vermin viewed him as a monster.

He dissected dogs, cats, even pigs for him, and the boy watched on with a clenched jaw and tears brimming at his eyes, begging to fall down his cheeks at any moment if he hadn't been so stubborn. What had begun as a way to frighten the little headache away became more of a way for Ruben to flaunt his ego, removing skin from muscle with ease, and reconnecting nerve endings like a true surgeon. He felt like a god, able to poke at a pig's brain and see its legs twitch when he stimulated the motor cortex. All the while, turning his head almost rhythmically to stare at the boy. He commanded approval after each "session", and was swift to realize the other was quicker and quicker to give it. After enough time, he'd decided the boy had earned his keep in becoming desensitized to the gore Ruben had offered. He proved himself worthy enough to give him his name. Ruben demanded  it of him, and, shakily avoiding all possible eye contact, he mumbled into disregarding ears, "Evan. That's it."

Ruben nodded and stabbed carelessly into the carcass below him.

"...I think a third and fourth code would be a better idea than this vocal ID bullshit, Ruben."

He was quick to coil back into reality again, certain that the other man could _not_ have the last word. Not as long as he dwelled in his presence. "Combinations are unreliable. That much has been established by the Doctor. My research is too valuable to simply be padlocked by combinations." He rose out of the loveseat and made a beeline for the music room, deciding his new wounds were safe from infection by his own definition. The other trailed quickly behind with the bottle of alcohol and the blood-stained rag, his own handiwork not yet completed.

Ruben sat at the piano, shirtless and still bleeding from uncleansed wounds. Exasperation brimmed against his skull when he found the other man seated beside him, splashing more antiseptic into the cloth and beginning to gently press it into his temples and scarred jawline. He sighed heavily, more as a vocal cue than out of annoyance.

"If you hate me you can just say so. It wouldn't be the first time."

Seeing his face, dejected and exhausted, reminded Ruben of how the boy would cry heavy tears for Laura's attention in childhood. And how he had had a fist fight with him on the front porch because of it. How the boy cried _real_  tears that day and in turn received more attention, and how that seared through his bones because he didn't feel _good enough_ for his sister. His sublime, transcendental Laura.

Ruben pivoted away from the cloth and worked his fingers along the piano mechanically; aggressively. Nonetheless, no untrained ear could discern his frustration from the grace with which he played the keys. His _Clair de Lune_ clashed with the radio in the foyer, allowing his ears to experience a cacophony of malformed harmonies.

"Almost done." He pulled the dressings out of his back pocket, gingerly wrapping them around a marred arm. He separated the bandages from the roll with his teeth, smacking his lips and scrunching his nose at the mild taste of Xeroform chemicals in his mouth. The tear was jagged and went on rough. Not his best work.

Ruben's pale eyes narrowed and his expression was implacable; burning hot into the other man's face. Fiercely, insipidly, he spat, "Leave me."

As he heard bare feet pad rapidly down the hallway, only pausing to collect the medical supplies scattered on the loveseat, Ruben lifted his bandaged limb away from the piano. He studied and pondered it for only a moment before resting his fingers back down onto the keys. His foot weighted itself down onto the pedals and the instrument hummed _Nocturne_ quietly, like a sigh. His head wounds still bled, but not enough to drip. Not enough for him to care. Yet his eyes still traversed back down to his dressings.

So precise.

 More precise than he would have expected from the little headache, despite the serrated edge at the end of the ribbon. His playing slowed as he leaned to gaze down the hallway as best he could. Ruben raised an eyebrow, shook his head, and bent back down towards the piano, continuing to press his fingers into the keys meticulously until an hour passed and the wounds had clotted properly.


End file.
